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by toast0 1873 days ago
Smaller apks are great, but throwing away the security model to get smaller apks really isn't. :(

Has Google come out with a way to compress string localization information yet? That would make a big difference for apps that support lots of languages, and last I checked (which was a few years ago, so happy to be wrong), Google didn't have a good solution there.
2 comments
izacus 1872 days ago
There's support for APK splits by locale, where you can upload a separate APK for each language which keeps the size down.

The AAB system criticized in this article will fix your issue too - Play Store delivery will automatically split APKs into per-locale slices and only download languages you need on your device.

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toast0 1872 days ago
> There's support for APK splits by locale, where you can upload a separate APK for each language which keeps the size down

How does this work if the user changes the locale on their phone? I guess you need to redownload the APK? I would still prefer compressed localization for all languages, and uncompress the needed one at install/start/sometime if it needs to be mmaped. If the phone locale is changed, uncompress the new one at some point.

> The AAB system criticized in this article will fix your issue too - Play Store delivery will automatically split APKs into per-locale slices and only download languages you need on your device.

Sure. The system fixes a problem Google (or its predecessor, not sure about timing) created, and let linger for over a decade, by handing control of signing keys to Google. Not a great fix. Sure, de facto, Google could patch any app via Play Services which has lots of permissions, but if they control the signing keys, they can more easily meddle.

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grishka 1872 days ago
Apks are zip archives. So, naturally, everything they contain is already compressed.
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toast0 1872 days ago
Not resource.asrc

Files in zip archives can be compressed, but don't have to be. If you compress resource.asrc, there are bad runtime consequences; much worse than the package bloat that results from not compressing it.

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grishka 1872 days ago
Are you saying that the SDK tools that build apks (aapt? I'm not sure) only compress files selectively? And what kinds of consequences are there if you do compress resources.arsc? I suppose it never keeps a copy in memory but reads it a lot, and if it's compressed, you're taking a performance penalty from it having to decompress the whole thing on every access?
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toast0 1872 days ago
Yes. Take a random apk and look at it with a zip lister. If resource.asrc is compressed, someone didn't use the SDK tools to build it (and I'd be shocked).

What you described is about my understanding of what happens. I would hope it doesn't uncompress the whole thing on every access, but only far enough to read the value; but I'm not sure. Note that it's not just the app itself that uses the app's resources; other elements of the OS use them too.

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